The Islamic Bank : Merchant or Intermediary?

Abstract

The paper shows that the motive for the above question is that prevailing laws differentiate between obligations of two types of institutions: mercantile institutions and those of financial intermediation. Certain activities may be permissible for the former institutions and not the latter. But from a Shariah stand point, no such differentiation is entertained. What is permissible or not is equally applicable to all economic entities, hence such a question is irrelevant.. The economic justification for differentiating mercantile from financial intermediary institutions is that the latter need to match the risks of their assets and liabilities. The paper finds this matching much less urgent in an Islamic bank model which is based on the principle of al-mudareb-yudareb (manager/recipient of funds on profit-sharing basis, assigns the funds to another on the same basis). The paper also shows that early Muslims have known financial intermediation through the madarabah contract.